“Money is not going to solve all of your problems, but it’s going to solve all of your money problems.”“Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits. It is the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.”“Money buys you freedom in the material world. It’s not going to make you happy, it’s not going to solve your health problems, it’s not going to make your family great, it’s not going to make you fit, it’s not going to make you calm. But it will solve a lot of external problems.”“Making money is not a thing you do—it’s a skill you learn.”

Money vs Wealth

I’ve learned a few things, and some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner, where you can figure it out for yourself. Because at the end of the day, I can’t quite teach anything. I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember.

“If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.”“Money is not the root of all evil; there’s nothing evil about it. But the lust for money is bad.”“Lusting for money is bad for us because it is a bottomless pit. It will always occupy your mind. If you love money, and you make it, there’s never enough. There is never enough because the desire is turned on and doesn’t turn off at some number.”“You make money to solve your money and material problems. I think the best way to stay away from this constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money.”

Despising Wealth

“You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.““Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP.”“Usually, the real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing.”“Without ownership, your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs.”“Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work. Yes, hard work matters, and you can’t skimp on it. But it has to be directed in the right way.”

Building Wealth

“I’m always ‘working.’ It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it.”“My motivation has shifted from being goal-oriented to being artistic.”“Creating businesses and making money are now more of an ‘art.’““Whether in commerce, science, or politics—history remembers the artists.”“I’m just playing, for sixteen hours a day. If others want to compete with me, they’re going to work, they’re going to lose because they’re not going to do it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.”“I got to combine my vocation and my avocation.”

Work as Play

“All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”“Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything.““When you find the right thing to do, when you find the right people to work with, invest deeply. Sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money.”

Time & Compounding

“Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life.““When you grow up, you’re playing the school game, or you’re playing the social game. Then you’re playing the money game, and then you’re playing the status game. These games just have longer and longer and longer-lived horizons. At some point, at least I believe, these are all just games. These are games where the outcome really stops mattering once you see through the game.”

Beyond the Games

“Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.”“Once you can solve your money problems, either by lowering your lifestyle or by making enough money, you want to retire.”There are multiple ways to retire:<ul><li>“One way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate.”</li><li>“A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk.”</li><li>“A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money.”</li></ul>

Retirement

“Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream.”“My old definition was ‘freedom to.’ Freedom to do anything I want. Freedom to do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like. Now, the freedom I’m looking for is internal freedom. It’s ‘freedom from.’ Freedom from reaction. Freedom from feeling angry. Freedom from being sad. Freedom from being forced to do things. I’m looking for ‘freedom from,’ internally and externally, whereas before I was looking for ‘freedom to.’“

Freedom

“All the real scorecards are internal.”“The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone.”“Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.““We are such social creatures, we’re externally programmed and driven. We don’t know how to play and win these single-player games anymore. We compete purely in multiplayer games.”

Single-Player Game

“‘I don’t have time’ is just another way of saying ‘It’s not a priority.'”“If something is your number one priority, then you will do it. That’s just the way life works. If you’ve got a fuzzy basket of ten or fifteen different priorities, you’re going to end up getting none of them.”“The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.”“Health, love, and your mission, in that order. Nothing else matters.”“There are three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.”

Priorities & Big Decisions

“If you cannot decide, the answer is no. And the reason is, modern society is full of options.““One of the things I’m trying to get rid of is the word ‘should.’ Whenever the word ‘should’ creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. Doing something because you ‘should’ basically means you don’t actually want to do it. It’s just making you miserable, so I’m trying to eliminate as many ‘shoulds’ from my life as possible.”“Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.”“Impatience with actions, patience with results.”

Choices & Actions

“Everyone makes it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, and discarding as you see fit. Figure it out yourself, and do it.““There is no endpoint to self-awareness and self-discovery. It’s a lifelong process you hopefully keep getting better and better at. There is no one meaningful answer, and no one is going to fully solve it unless you’re one of these enlightened characters.”“The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.”

Know Yourself

“You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about.”“All you should do is what you want to do. If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them, you get to listen to the little voice inside your head that wants to do things a certain way. Then, you get to be you.”“To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something.”“Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward."

Find Your Passion & Be The Best

“I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge.”“Specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to it. It’s almost baked into your personality and your identity. Then you can hone it.”Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.”

Specific Knowledge

“‘Productize’ and ‘yourself.’ ‘Yourself’ has uniqueness. ‘Productize’ has leverage. ‘Yourself ‘ has accountability. ‘Productize’ has specific knowledge. ‘Yourself ‘ also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words.“Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.”

Productize Yourself

“The really smart thinkers are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.”“The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger.”“Mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.”“Evolution, thermodynamics, information theory, and complexity have explanatory and predictive power in many aspects of life.”

Mental Models

“The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.”“Real knowledge is intrinsic, and it’s built from the ground up.”“If you’re a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money. You can always see what’s coming up in society, what the value is, where the demand is, and you can learn to come up to speed.”“If you want to make the maximum amount of money possible, if you want to get rich over your life in a predictable way, stay on the bleeding edge of trends and study technology, design, and art—become really good at something.”

Learning

“Reading (learning) is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else.”“Read originals and read classics.”“Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.”“Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval.”“Read what you love until you love to read.”“Read enough, and you become a connoisseur. Then you naturally gravitate more toward theory, concepts, nonfiction.”

Reading

A list of powerful statements that give you a perspective if you haven't read Naval's tweets yet. If you have, read it once again for newer ideas :)

Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

Self Improvement

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

All CEOs have the same responsibilities, such as working with the board, engaging stakeholders, setting direction, and creating a positive culture. What separates the best from the rest is how they approach these tasks. All excelled at some, were good at the rest—and knew the difference. All are world-class integrators. And all applied a distinctive set of mindsets against these responsibilities.Here are six mindsets that characterize great CEOs.

What CEOs Do And Why

In times of uncertainty, it can be tempting to minimize the downside. However, that all but guarantees either mediocrity or decline. Successful CEOs want to avoid making mistakes, of course, but they also act boldly, actively seeking significant opportunities. They raise the aspirations of the company, and they look for intersections where the business and the market meet. In effect, they are excellent futurists and thus can define the right vision.While they will cut their losses if a move is a dud, they stick to the strategy. The vision comes first; financial performance flows from that.

Being Bold

Only one in three strategies is successfully implemented—in large part because change generates resistance. That is why the “soft stuff”—that is, matters related to people and culture—can be the hardest stuff of all to get right.Research has found that companies that solve the soft stuff are more than twice as likely (from 30 to 79 percent) to execute a strategy successfully.1 To carry their organization with them, leaders need to make the case for change, and then keep track of results.

Treat The Soft Stuff As The Hard Stuff

To build high-performing leadership teams, the best CEOs start with roles, not people, asking what the most important jobs are and then finding people who can do those jobs. And they design for overall functionality, bringing in a wide range of expertise. CEOs must engage with each individual while keeping some distance. And, again, the soft stuff counts.

Solve for The Team’s Psychology

The board is the CEO’s boss, but an awkward one—a lot of people, infrequently seen. Like any relationship, the bedrock is trust. That means being open, honest, and prompt about plans and problems. The bad news is, well, bad, but delivering it is also a chance for the board to help, which is its function. CEOs should establish a strong relationship with the lead director and check-in with other directors once or twice a year. Finally, introduce the board to the company by connecting the board to managers.

Directors Helping The Business

Purpose can be difficult to define. At the very least, it should be powerful enough to inspire people, simple enough to be readily understood, and make business sense. And purpose matters: companies with a clear social purpose have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 20 years.The best CEOs ask themselves why their company exists, and then make purpose an intrinsic part of the business model, knowing that testing strategy against purpose can open up new areas of growth. Leading with purpose can also <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/covid-19-and-the-employee-experience-how-leaders-can-seize-the-moment">enhance employee well-being</a> and build loyalty.

Start With 'Why'

Great CEOs make it a priority to manage themselves to ensure that they are not being pulled apart. That is obviously personal, but we did find some commonalities. The most important is self-discipline, particularly regarding the use of time. Old-school techniques such as lists, stars, and colour coding crop up often as time-management techniques. At the same time, the CEOs also build flexibility into their schedule—to respond to the unexpected or simply to think.Ultimately, managing personal effectiveness is about developing a sense of perspective, and then using that to see into the future.

Do What Only You Can Do

No book can create a great CEO, any more than a boxing manual can produce a Manny Pacquiao. But in business, as in boxing, there is such a thing as good technique. CEOs matter: we calculated that the 200 CEOs we identified created additional economic value of about $5 trillion. By identifying the mindsets that characterize great leadership, we believe that excellence can be cultivated—now and in the future.

The Bottom Line

What do CEOs do? Why do they do it that way? And what matters most?

Stashed ideas

How to be a great 21st-century CEO

Content on max-ing motivation and productivity is everywhere. You probably have a mental list of all the platitudes or hacks. Motivational quotes trick us into feeling like we’ve accomplished something.Then why do we have days when we check off items from To-Do's and days when we just can’t get ourselves out of bed on time? And when we do get motivated, why is it so hard to keep it up?

Did you read platitudes today?

Author Robert McKain quoted “Action precedes motivation.”, but we always read that motivation is what makes us act. So what is it? So should I wait for that drive to get stuff done, or not?There exists an elaborate process of brain activity that pushes you to pursue goals YOU REALLY WANT TO ACHIEVE and the performance tasks that are demanded from you irrespective of interest.

Patience or Impulse?

Having resolutions and not following through is not because you didn't have the time. It's the Neurochemistry of your Motivation & Reward Systems.Motivation is <ul><li>A complex process in the brain</li><li>Involves multiple brain regions</li><li>Several Pathways</li><li>Release of Neural Messengers (Neurotransmitters like Dopamine)</li></ul>

80% of NY Resolutions Fail??

Dopamine (DA) is synonymously used with happiness and reward. It helps feel pleasure and relays 'motivational salience'. Motivational Salience means DA<ol><li>Indicates positive rewarding stimuli and </li><li>Responds to negative non-rewarding stimuli like stress</li></ol>This means, that both external environment and mood play a role in your drive to act.

Craving and Prediction of Rewards

DA is released when we work towards something we think is rewarding - a video game or desire for something tasty. DA is released while predicting and craving rewards, not so much while experiencing it. The process : <ol><li>Release in Planning Network in Pre-frontal Cortex (does most of the thinking)</li><li>Release in Motivation Generating Network in Striatum</li></ol>Parts of the striatum read motivational variables & push you to act on them. This can sometimes go awry - depending on the path and timing of this DA release, you may feel motivated to carry on a task like reading a book or you just don’t feel like it.

Quick - Think of cheesecake!

“I only write when inspiration strikes, Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”

Reward/Incentive - achievability of a task and the perceived pleasure/reward from it decides your motivation levels. But the aim is to conquer your goals without waiting for that drive. So what else?<ul><li>Indulge in Challenges/ Competition: Activity of Glutamine and Glutamate determines motivational stamina (our ability to continue a difficult task)</li><li>Unexpected Rewards: Finding money on your walking path one day, will raise your hopes of finding more.</li><li>Habit: Once you start acting on those goals/tasks, a routine will act as a cue for your motivation.</li></ul>

What will boost my motivation?

Ways you can consciously increase and sustain your motivation : <ul><li>Anticipation of Rewards: Visualize a completed task and act towards it, it activates the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC)</li><li>Record your Progress: Track your progress and accomplishments while taking small steps</li><li>Health & Intake: Regular exercise can remodel your entire reward system, allowing increased dopamine release and availability. </li></ul>

Purposeful Self-Motivation

Something we need to know the science of before we blame ourselves for unproductivity. 

Neuroscience News research articles cover neurology, psychology, AI, brain science, mental health, robotics and cognitive sciences in a free, open access magazine.

Finding Motivation the Neuroscience Way

While I spend a decent amount of time trying to memorize various things <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/some-tweaks-to-my-daily-learning/">using tools like Anki</a>, for the most part rote memorization is unnecessary. Learning systems and frameworks for understanding are vitally important, but for most everything else you can just look it up when you need it.

It’s an open book test

Similar to the “you won’t be carrying around a calculator in your pocket when you’re an adult” that many of us heard in school 20 years ago, they could have also said “you won’t be carrying around the entirely of the world’s knowledge in your pocket” and they’d have been wrong about that too.Of course, finding that knowledge can be tough as times, as the ability to use tools like Google is a skill. It’s a skill we can all learn, but it’s a skill nonetheless.

In your pocket

“In the real world, the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market.”

Learn to search efficiently, learn the frameworks that dominate your industry, then learn lessons along the way and you’ll find yourself doing very well.

While I spend a decent amount of time trying to memorize various things using tools like Anki, for the most part rote memorization is unnecessary. Learning systems and frameworks for understanding are vitally important, but for most everything else you can just look it up when you need it. Similar…

It's an open book test

When you’re trying to learn something new, you can choose to learn it fast or learn it deep, and there is a place for both.

Learning fast versus learning deep

For example, I’m <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/1000-days-of-anki/">using Anki</a> right now to work on my knowledge of the Periodic Table. I just want a better cursory understanding of it (“Au” = “Gold”, for example) and this will do the trick. For many things that I want to learn, though, a deeper dive is really what I’m after.

Learning Fast

For most of what I’m trying to learn, I work to learn deeply. For years, that largely surrounded coding and development, but for the last decade or so it has largely shifted to business and marketing and that’s reflected in the number of posts I write about both of those subjects.I’ve said before that <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/to-write-more-read-more/">in order to write more I need to read more</a>, and that’s true, but the execution is essentially reversed. I read things that interest me which I desire to know more about, and that reading leads into subsequent posts about those topics.

Learning Deep

I don’t want to “learn fast”, in any subject. I don’t want shortcuts. If I don’t enjoy the subject, I don’t want to learn it; and if I enjoy it, I want to prolong the pleasure. I avoid what exam-takers do: I trade speed for depth.

I’ll continue to add more shallow/quick learning into my life, for things like the periodic table, geography and other general knowledge type subjects, but knowing when to choose to go deep is a great thing to consider.

When you're trying to learn something new, you can choose to learn it fast or learn it deep, and there is a place for both. For example, I'm using Anki right now to work on my knowledge of the Periodic Table. I just want a better cursory understanding of it…

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

How to be a great 21st-century CEO

Finding Motivation the Neuroscience Way

It's an open book test

Learning fast versus learning deep

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